As the Donald Trump “candidacy” for the presidency unfolded, most people in the UK must have been astonished that such a buffoon could be taken seriously. Part of the reason is that an idiotic proposition on the scale of a Trump presidential bid would never have survived the unruly British media. But American journalism is either irredeemably partisan (e.g. Fox News and talk radio) or obsessed with strange notions of ‘impartiality’ that allow absurdities to flourish. (The old “balance as bias” problem.)

Anyway, after a bad few weeks in which one watched with incredulity as Trump raised the ‘birther’ fantasy to new heights, it was just lovely to see Obama, for a change, take the idiocy on. And what made it really delicious was that Trump was in the audience, as a guest of the Washington Post, no less. Which makes one wonder what the hell an allegedly serious newspaper is doing having him as a guest. It’s a strange come-down for a paper that once brought down a crooked president.